Ground Pound

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Essentially the more powerful relative of the Goomba Stomp, this is a near obligatory basic combat maneuver that involves the Player Character jumping, ducking, or crouching in the air, and then forcefully smashing/pounding/diving directly into the ground. Is also a common way of activating switches. If the attack sends out a wave of damaging energy, then it's a Shockwave Stomp.

Much like the Double Jump, you shouldn't think about how exactly this works. Also like the Double Jump in that, if falling at a certain speed causes injury to the character, a Ground Pound can instantly neutralise their falling speed.

Practically a staple of 3D platformers, but by no means limited to that one genre.

It is also a favorite boss tactic, often used by big and powerful bruisers who will leap up and off the screen before coming down upon your character unless he or she manages to get out of the way in time (usually the main warning the Player Character will get is a Shadow of Impending Doom upon them moments before impact).

Not to be confused with:

Ground and Pound, a Mixed Martial Arts tactic that involves taking an opponent to the ground using a takedown or throw, obtaining a top, or dominant, position, and then striking the opponent repeatedly.

Examples:

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Action Adventure

Once his superhuman melee skills are upgraded, Gideon Wyeth of Advent Rising can perform a Seismic Pound.

Various Castlevania protagonists can do this, usually after getting the double jump ability. With the right timing, a mid-air "stomp" can sometimes get you up to platforms you shouldn't be able to reach yet.

Soma in Aria of Sorrow only gets this ability from an enemy (usually it is inherent with double jumping), and in Dawn of Sorrow, the damage the drop kick does depends on how long you fall for. So get the Medusa Soul and drop kick, then float in the air for ages using the soul, then let him drop for high damage. It's not always useful, but it's cool as hell. It's not entirely a ground pound though, as you can use it to bounce off enemies and even chandeliers and candles.

Choosing Moosh as the animal companion in Oracle Of Ages or Seasons lets you do this to attack (Moosh is an enormous, winged blue bear who can fly over vast chasms).

Everyone in The Simpsons: Hit & Run (that you control) can do this. Its only uses are on either breakables in the environment (for coins and wanted level) and innocent bystanders (for wanted level only). It actually doesn't reduce your falling damage... because there is no damage to humans.

Comes in more varieties than is funny in [PROTOTYPE]. Two-fisted, stomp, elbow drop... oh, and like a bunker buster. The last one is kinda hard to aim, but afterwards, the LZ tends to be clear.

God of War. Slight variation in that you can Charge it, and can perform it on the ground (where it's the shockwave and not the collision that does the work.)

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe - one simple move from jumping, shoot a webline to the floor, yank downward, and pound the ground with a moderately ranged shockwave.

Burrito Bison has his "Rocket Slam", which has several uses — it prevents him from losing speed on contact with the floor, it protects him from the usual consequences of hitting police gummies (since hitting them with a rocket slam doesn't count), and if he hits an explosive gummy, it amplifies the boost he normally gets.

The Matrix: Path of Neo a few examples of this during in-game cutscenes, whenever he lands it causes the SWAT team to stagger off balance.

Padre Destino in Vigilante 8: Second Offense has an underground Ground Pound. He goes subterranean, tunnels to the target, and erupts from the ground, emitting a shockwave that blows nearby enemies away.

Fighting Game

Many of the characters in the Super Smash Bros. games have something to this effect. Yoshi, Bowser, King Dedede, and Sonic (with the custom special "Stomp") do this in the traditional manner, and Kirby simply turns into one of many possible forms (rock, spike ball, Thwomp, Lip's garbage block). But beware: You can ground pound off the edge of the map and lose a life.

No wrestling game would be complete without lots of falling attacks, both from a normal standing position and from the top ropes. Elbow drops, fist drops, splashes, and so forth.

The Mortal Kombat series might have introduced ground pounds to fighting games, with the Shokan warriors Goro, Kinaro and Sheeva being the primary users of this move. In Armageddon's Konquest mode, Taven can use his version to, yes, trigger switches on the floor.

In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! all main characters receive this wondrous ability thanks to the setting's weak moon gravity and a mysterious device on their shoulder. It is augmented with a hearty dose of Shockwave Stomp, which staggers enemies and breaks their forcefield-helmets for a short time, making them gasp for air (acceleration is constant and stomp reaches greater proportions with longer falls). The maneuver is described in-game as done specifically with one's butt, and is officially called butt-stomping.

Halo 5: Guardians: The name of one of the new Spartan abilities, with a corresponding medal. If you are above an enemy, you can jump, "charge up", quickly target an area, and hit them from above. In multiplayer, it will severely deplete the shields and health of a fully shielded Spartan, allowing them to be finished off quickly. A Spartan with less than full shields will be killed outright, and the splash damage will kill or damage any enemies within a certain radius, making it possible to kill more than one enemy in one ground pound. However, a player with acute hearing can potentially hear the "charge up" and move out of the way, and hovering in the air before ground pounding can render you vulnerable to enemy fire (killing an enemy while they're in the middle of a Ground Pound gets you the Starkiller medal).

Hack And Slash

There are two ways of doing this in Drakengard. The first and most obvious way is to be using Seere and have him command Golem to destroy everything in front of him, and then watch the fun. The second way is to start a running charge, jump, and attack, in which the protagonist sends out a circular shockwave around him when he lands. This second move is almost completely useless.

Diablo III barbarians also have the Leap skill. The Might of the Earth armor set, with a build colloquially known as "Leapquake," makes use of Leap along with an item called Lut Socks that creates an earthquake where the barbarian lands.

Heroes of the Storm has this as one of Sonya's ultimate abilities. Instead of shockwaves, it causes the ground to shatter upwards to create a makeshift wall around her and anyone unlucky enough to be her target.

Common move in the Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors series. The area of effect is usually very small, but the AI frequently uses it to knock down players who stick too close to an enemy officer. Oh, and in the Samurai Warriors series, it's one of the few ways to reveal a burrowing ninja.

City of Heroes had this on release for their Super Strength powerset in the form of Foot Stomp, which later had an alternative animation option that used one's fist instead of their feet. Later, the Kinetic Melee powerset had a similar attack in the form of Burst.

Guild Wars 2 gives us the Warrior's Stomp and the Elementalist's Earthquake, making your character jump into the air and slam into the ground, whether a ten foot tall Norn, a five hundred pound charr, or a tiny, tiny asura.

Jak and Daxter: As "normal" Jak you can jump and dive to the ground fists first. As Dark Jak jumping and hitting the ground with your fist creates a blast of Dark Eco that damages/kills everything on screen (including your teammates and the people you're supposed to protect).

In the Mega Man X games, Zero has had a few moves of this sort, most notably his Giga Attack. In addition, Guts Man (Mega Man 1), Hard Man (Mega Man 3), Stone Man (5), Concrete Man (9), and Flame Mammoth (Mega Man X) all have "seismic" attacks where they slam into the ground very hard, causing Mega Man to lose his balance and fall down stunned if he's on the ground. Hard Man's case is quite odd because Mega Man freezes even if he's in mid-air, giving Hard Man a chance to recover from his upside-down position.

Vexx has a "Ground Blast", where Vexx halts in midair (yes, it helps avert falling damage) and blasts energy downward.

Crash Bandicoot gains a Ground Pound attack in his second game, with which he can belly-flop onto unsuspecting enemies or bust open metal-enforced crates that would otherwise seem impenetrable. In the third game, this attack can be upgraded to create a shockwave that can destroy crates from a reasonable distance.

Sonic the Hedgehog could perform something like this with the Bubble Shield powerup in a couple of his games. It was also used to bounce up to platforms that were too high up for a normal jump. Particular examples include:

Also, Sonic could get an item called the "Bounce Bracelet" to perform the same bouncing maneuver from Sonic 3.

Sonic Heroes had a body slam that worked a little like the bounce bracelet (without the height gain in most cases) when used by Big or Vector.

In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic can use the Stomp after acquiring the Stomping Shoes (only in the PS360 version; in the WiiS2 version, you have it the whole game). It's used to hit certain ground switches and take out shielded robots.

And Secret Rings features a handful of skills that allow Sonic to deal damage to enemies during a jump cancel. Yeah, that translates directly into "ground pound."

In Sonic Colors, Sonic can do that move from the beginning of the game. There's also the Blue Cube Wisp, which has a more powerful Ground Pound as its secondary power.

Sonic Generations features the now standard stomp attack, but there is an optional equippable skill that you can gain by beating a mission called the Power Stomp, which turns it into a Shockwave Stomp.

In the Sonic Advance Trilogy, all of the playable characters except Tails have some variation on it. Sonic gets the bounce attack, Amy a spinning hammer attack, Knuckles the drill claw move from Adventure 2 except without the digging, and Cream a more traditional Mario-style hip drop. Tails eventually gets to do a hip-drop style ground pound in Sonic Boom.

Wario uses this in the Wario Land series. He first used it against Mario in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, then later incorporated into his standard moveset. In one game, it was used for a similar purpose as Sonic's Bounce Attack. In another, if Wario fell from high enough, he could crash through blocks that were otherwise unbreakable.

Subverted in Wario Land: Shake It! If the player shakes the controller when a gauge is full, Wario literally pounds the ground (with his fist), stunning all on-screen enemies and knocking down loose objects.

In Psychonauts, Razputin can do this with his telekinetic hand during a jump. In Lungfishopolis (where Raz is the 50-foot tall "monster"), this attack still works, though instead of using his hands, he uses his feet.

In Spyro the Dragon from the second game onwards, you can pull off a move called a Horn Dive/Headbash. Often used to activate switches in The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, and Skylanders' Spyro can acquire a similar move as an upgrade.

Ratchet & Clank had this in the first game (for switches) when you obtain the Thruster Pack. It was removed in the later games when the Thruster Pack was changed from an upgrade to the Heli Pack to an alternative.

Kao the Kangaroo: Both Round 2 and Mystery of the Volcano have it. It can be used not only to fight enemies, but also to press switches and the like. Round 2 even has an unlockable upgrade that makes the attack a lot more potent.

Real Time Strategy

Assault Sergeant Thaddeus in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II has the Assault Jump ability, allowing him and his squad to perform a Ground Pound on any enemies you target, knocking them aside. Subverted in the board game, where trying that same maneuver with the same models (a Deep Strike) used to result in the models instantly dying, no matter how flimsy the thing is they landed on. Thanks to a recent core rules change, there's only a 1/3 chance of instant death in this case, but none of the three results of the Mishap Table cause any damage to what you land on.

Role Playing Game

Sacred has several characters with this, and a couple with no shock waves.

The protagonists in Wild ARMs 4 and 5 have this as part of their puzzle-solving repertoire (yes, used to pound switches).

Dragon Age II Warriors have Tremor and Mighty Blow, striking the ground for massive damage or disabling opponents within a radius. Fist of the Maker is a telekinetic version.

Final Fantasy X: Cindy, eldest of the Magus Sisters (an optional summon) has the Camisade special attack; she is propelled into the air, and hands hard on the opponent. She can't be told to do this directly, however, as the Magus sisters can only be 'influenced' by Yuna to act a certain way in combat.

Dark Souls — a pair of bosses named Ornstein and Smough have a buttstomp move. Smough gets it when he's small, but if you kill him first and make Ornstein giant, Ornstein will get a superpowered one that also releases a lightning shockwave.

Dark Souls II — Like its predecessor, there's one boss called the Old Dragonslayer who has a dark-type shockwave ground pound.

Dead Rising features an aerial stomp attack that can be gained. Aside from its usual ability to instantly decimate undead forces beneath him, it also allows Frank West to make suicidal jumps and be fine thanks to knee drop invincibility. Fa~ntastic!

Non-video game examples:

Comic Books

Someone else who uses this a lot is the Incredible Hulk. Not only is this a staple of his in the comics, animations, and the most recent movie, but every game adaptation has him able to do it.

Most comic characters with Super Strength have used this move at one time or another to create an earthquake/shockwave and trip up or knock down opponents. Some, like the mutant Arclight and the Inhuman Gorgon, never use any other attack.

Films: Animated

In Disney's Alice in Wonderland, The Queen of Hearts does this while the cards are dragging off prisoners for painting the roses red. It sends all of the nearby cards falling flat on their faces.

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